And so it begins…
The day after the new year rang in, I was sitting on the couch trolling through the channels on my tv for something to watch while enjoying my time off.
As I flipped from one channel to the other, I saw the following celebrity faces : Dan Marino, Jillian Michaels, Tony Horton, and Shaun T.
If you aren’t in the “know”, all the people I mentioned are connected with weight loss and/or fitness programs.
I immediately thought to myself, “its starting.”
New Year’s day is when most resolutions start.
The biggest resolution for most people is to get rid of unwanted pounds which accumulated around their waistlines over the past year.
In some cases, it isn’t just pounds within the year but pounds over the years.
Within seconds, I immediately thought of my gym being packed to capacity only to find tumbleweeds blowing through it before January ends.
I know it sounds negative but I’ve seen it too many times in fact I use to be one of “those people.”
It wasn’t until I had an epiphany and a willingness to change that I became successful with weight loss.
Will Power Less
Can you lose weight with will power alone?
I consider myself to be a disciplined person but there was a time, when I lacked discipline with food.
Before I knew anything about weight loss, I made a half ditch effort to lose weight as quickly as possible by eliminating all carbohydrates.
I was following someone who told me this would put my body in ketosis.
I was a novice to ketosis and obviously weight loss at the same time.
The diet was successful because it immediately reduced my weight.
People gave me comments on how good I looked on the outside but on the inside it was complete hell.
The “inside” hell I was living culminated in an episode, I’ll never forget.
Because I decided to eat protein and shun carbs, I had very strong food cravings.
On one particular night, my will power came crashing down and there is nothing I could do to stop it.
I finally gave in and made a late night trip to the grocery store and found myself standing in the aisle staring at a box of pop tarts.
I grabbed two boxes of the strawberry filled ones, paid for them, and then hopped in my car and headed home.
When I got home, I tore through those two boxes like I was looking for gold.
After eating them I felt both ashamed and relieved.
My success with weight loss was negated by what I thought was one weak moment.
Little did I know, the one weak moment would turn into a bigger one as I introduced carbs back into my diet and gained all the weight back!
Lesson # 1 learned – will power doesn’t work even for the ultra disciplined person.
CalPro Control
We’ve been taught a simple formula for weight loss.
Calories in – calories out = weight loss.
Seems simple… the less calories we eat the more weight we’ll lose, right?
If this were true, everyone who dieted would have success but do they?
Most people are on perpetual diets.
Sad thing is, they keep dieting the same way.
They either give up foods they love or starve themselves.
This is a result of the simple formula I shared with you at the beginning of this paragraph.
It wouldn’t be long before I realized counting calories and eating less wouldn’t work for me.
This realization would be reinforced on a podcast years later on Perfectly Healthy And Toned Radio.
Ray Audette whom I nicknamed ,”the godfather of Paleo” talked about the Harvard Nutritional Study.
In the study, patients who ate more weighed less.
That’s right, people who eat more real food actually ended up weighing less without calorie restriction!
Lesson #2 – Restricting calories never works…your body will eventually adjust. This brings me to my final lesson.
The Fats Man
Are you still fat phobic?
We’ve come to believe through brainwashing and no fault of our own fat is bad.
We think eating fat, well in fact, make us fat.
All you need to do is take a quick look around you to quickly put an end to this myth.
Nearly everyone has been on a low fat diet whether on purpose or not on purpose.
Foods have been intentionally stripped of fat in effort to reduce cholesterol which in turn negates heart disease.
Has avoiding fat been working? There are now more obese people than ever and more people with heart disease.
The recommendation of heart healthy oils and avoiding saturated fats has had a detrimental effect.
One need to look no further to see that since we’ve eliminated butter, coconut oil, and animal fats from our diets we’re unhealthier.
Fats help cholesterol and in turn cholesterol feeds our hormones.
Hormones control everything in your body including weight loss.
Lesson #3 – Get some fats in your diet man!
I could’ve easily made this post long and intricate but it needn’t be.
It should be as elementary as weight loss.
Years ago, I was in a space where I needed to lose 35lbs and I did it only after trial and error.
The one thing that saved me was the willingness to change but most of all change my way thinking.
Many people will have good intentions to lose unwanted pounds but sadly nearly all will fail at their goal.
Why?
Is it because they will keep doing the same learned things and expect a different result?
The weight loss machine is the definition of insanity.
When will it occur to us that there is a solution.
As Yoda says in the “Empire Strikes Back”, “you must unlearn what you have learned”.
I know its hard because some of these things have been ingrained in us.
We’ve heard them over and over again so it makes ihard to change.
ll be the first to tell you change is hard but if I can do it, so can you.
That my friends is the the final lesson in weight loss.
Now its your turns…what is the one thing you’re changing this year to finally get rid of those unwanted pounds? What are you going to change?